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Monday, 19 October 2009

She's all opinion again..

Yep, I'm deluded enough to think you may want my opinion of a new product. Shopkeeper gal took me as a guest to a Retailer's Day at Design Objectives, the home of Anita's, Papermania and a bunch of stamp lines like Forever Friends and Clare Curd's that you may or may not recognise. They are also the distributor here in dear old blighty for QuicKutz and I had a chance to play with their relatively new die cutter, the Epic Six. I'm not aware that there has been an Epic 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 or indeed a prequel, and I'm sure a lot of market research was applied before the name was settled on, but - huh? And I'm sorry, but I can't do better than link to it because I can't find a photo online that will allow me to upload it without stealing..so, no can do. Perhaps it's still a secret!So it's a die cutter, with a flat bed...not unlike the Cuttlebug of course. In its favour - it's in neutral shades of grey/black. I don't doubt that in less than a year it will be availabe in some designer colour or other, but for now it's sensible. Really, I'd say that QuicKutz waited till everyone had tried all the tricks with the Cuttlebug and then made a machine with all the required refinements built in. For instance; it has a six inch aperture and the shim plates are 12" long. Useful already, QuicKutz certainly have the steal over Provocraft on the long borders. I don't have any, but am guessing that with the wider aperture, (and the right arrangement of shims) the really big Sizzix brand dies will fit through - and of course, QuicKutz must have a range of dies and embossing folders that need this width, or they wouldn't have bothered! It's slightly less compact than the Cuttlebug - in that the bed doesn't fold shut - but to be honest, that probably won't be a primary consideration. In all other respects but one, I found that it performed in just the same way..kinda did what it was meant to and no more, certainly no less though. But - and here's the clincher for me..the crank handle mechanism operates anti clockwise - so you're pushing the plates/stack to deliver them to the roller with one hand and trying to remember that the rolling mechanism works in completely the opposite way that you expect it to. Indeed, utterly counter intuitively. It's an odd experience - a bit like patting your head and rubbing your tummy - that sort of action where each time, you have to think harder about it than you should need to. Why? I have no idea. If you're left handed and don't mind the decal being on 'the back', it'll work as you expect it to! I'm totally bamboozled by it, can't see any logic for it at all and certainly don't want to work with a tool that catches me out every time I use it. Epic, that ain't.Do you have one? Is there a logical reason for the crank mechanism, am I missing soemthing? Please let me know!

It sounds bizarre to wind the wrong way - and I can't imagine why they would do that - surely they must have thought about that? The winding is quite a big part of the machine, surely?!

I have a cuttlebug. Although I can't remember the last time I used it. I did flirt with the idea of getting rid of it, but I can't quite bring myself to do it. I don't use it out of laziness really - it's so much easier to get the letter stickers or the alphabet stamps out, and as much as I love the embossing, I do find it quite difficult to use on pages and cards. I have to force myself to remember it's there.